What I've Learned: Ike Turner

Musician, 70, San Marcos, California

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I'm pure with myself, man. I don't bullshit Ike. I bite the bullet. I don't lie to me.

You can feel when people are yessin' you. You can feel the real.

I always showed them what to do. I can go and record any girl you bring in here right now and you would swear to God she's coppin' off Tina -- because there is no Tina. You hear me through Tina. I do it all. I do every bit of it. Every note that's played. When you saw Ike and Tina, every step came from me. All that shit came dead out of me.

You got to stand for somethin' or you'll fall for anything.

I know that people are stuck in cocaine, and I know that you feel it start off as fun, and then you wake up lookin' for it, and then you want out, because you see your life and you feel there's no way out. I say it like this: It's like you have glasses on and you can really see clear. So once, man, you put the stuff on it and it's a little brighter, but what happens is, when the stuff dies, now it's dull. You can never get it back clear unless you put some stuff on it. So every day you wake up, you put some stuff on it to clear it up, and you never can get it back clear. So you gotta go all the way to zero, where you can't see shit, and then you can find a light down there. There is a light there, but you have to really want it to get it.

I had to hit bottom. And when I hit bottom, it was like jail was the best thing ever happened to me.

People meet me and say, "Man, you're nothin' like what I thought you were. You're nothin' like that movie." But, man, that movie is not me. They had to have a villain. They assassinated my career with that damn movie, man.

My mother's a woman. I mean, I loved my mother to death. I ain't gonna do nothin' no more to nobody else than somebody might do to my mother, man.

Where's the Ray Charleses, the Sam Cookes, the Jackie Wilsons, the Louis Jordans? Where? It's no more. Black radio died. Kids took to the street with rap and hip-hop. "Shoot him. Kill him. The bitch this. The bitch that." This is what they had to do to sell records. So they did it. But the rest of this life that I got in me, man, I'm gonna use it to get black music back on the radio. Because there's very few of us left. Motown sold out -- that's dead.

It make me happy to make you happy, but I'm not gonna make you happy by makin' me sad -- and if I got to marry you because you want a husband, uh-uh. That's dead. I'll never get married again. That was number thirteen I just got a divorce from. Took a long time for me to learn, didn't it? I'm through, man. You can bet your bottom dollar.

The first drink of whiskey you take, you feel like a peacock; you want to get up and stroll around. It's just like peacock blood. The next drink you take, you feel like you can whup the world -- that's the lion blood in it. And then the last drink you take, you're so drunk you want to lay down and wallow -- that's the hog blood.

What am I? I'm an organizer. Next, I'm a piano player.

I'm alive today and enjoying what the fuck I do.

To me, the onliest two people that ever had freedom in America is a white man and a black woman. They can do what the shit they wanna do. A black woman in Mississippi could slap the shit out of a white man -- there ain't nothin' gonna happen to her. Rosa Parks, if she hadda been a black dude that done that, they woulda hung him on the highest tree. I'm just bein' real about it.

When you don't like whites, or you don't like blacks, well, you're just cheating your own self.

I call some people RadioShacks -- if you got questions, we got answers. They got answers for every fuckin' thing.

One of the wrongs that I did in my life was that I fired this guy because he was too slow with them pedals, and come to find out ten or twelve years later it was Jimi Hendrix. You can't win 'em all.

If he have millions of dollars, I been there. If he's poor, eating out of the garbage can, I been there. If he have fifty women, I had that. If he lookin' for one, I been there, too. I've lived my life.

Don't do shit about me when I die. Let me rest.

Everything is a hole. When you're born, two holes -- there's a hole at the head of your penis, and you come out of a hole. So you come out, and everything is about holes. When you eat? Hole. When you breathe, it's a hole. When you see, it's a hole. When you hear, it's a hole. And when you die, where you goin'? Right back in the hole. If you get too much money, you gonna be in a hole. If you don't get enough, you're definitely gonna be in a hole. So to me, the best thing to do is stop tryin' to stay outta the hole: Get in the hole and find out what's happenin' with the hole and try to control the hole. And then you can have the hole, because you understand the hole.